After the rush of trying to get the house sorted and my bags packed right up until Phil (the driver) appeared, the trip from then on ran pretty much to schedule and with no fuss. The high-light of the journey had to be my first time in Heathrow's Terminal 5 - I was impressed! After all the fuss over the opening and the lost bags, I was actually impressed by the quality and facilities in the place. It is as good as any super airport in the Far East and way better than any US or major European Airport...maybe there is hope yet that London can have great facilities for a super Olympics in 2012!
My BA flight arrived in Hong Kong 20 minutes early and all this arriving early advantage was lost in the line to get through immigration! Oh well, my bags were happily carouselling around the super efficient carousels and I was soon on an Express train into Hong Kong. I stayed at the YWCA (yes, men are allowed to stay there) in a nice clean room but with a very, very hard mattress on the bed! I hope the beds during the long trip are not as hard! As a result my first night's sleep was much interrupted and even after I took a sleeping tablet the following night, sleep was hard to experience.
On Sunday morning, the bags were packed and I was super-efficiently checked on my flight at the Hong Kong Station check-in facility - it's so good to drop off the bags this way, why did they have to close the Paddington check-in facilities? Bloody terrorists I suppose. I have no idea how the bags get to Hong Kong Airport as they don't appear to be loaded onto the passenger trains and you never seem to pass a 'bag' train on the line to the airport!!
Tried out my new Priority Pass card to get into an executive lounge at the airport and was quite happily checking http://www.bbc.co.uk/ for news thinking I had plenty of time before my flight to Hanoi...WRONG! A quick check of my boarding pass and...RUN! The last passenger for flight VN791 to Hanoi naughtily blamed a fictitious queue at security for his late boarding!
Plane was a reasonably new Airbus A321 and reasonably full too! Next to me was a reasonably chatty (to the point of too chatty) Kiwi girl about to start a new job in Hanoi. Tried my best to bury my nose in the in-flight magazine with limited success.
Flight landed smoothly at a rather hazy Hanoi Airport which looked spookily like the airport in Auckland, New Zealand - my Kiwi neighbour did not know what to make of that as she had remarked, what a cute little airport when she saw it. Needless to say, we did not chat too much after that!
Immigration and Customs check were a doddle and I got through very quickly and was met by the driver from the hotel I would be staying at.
My BA flight arrived in Hong Kong 20 minutes early and all this arriving early advantage was lost in the line to get through immigration! Oh well, my bags were happily carouselling around the super efficient carousels and I was soon on an Express train into Hong Kong. I stayed at the YWCA (yes, men are allowed to stay there) in a nice clean room but with a very, very hard mattress on the bed! I hope the beds during the long trip are not as hard! As a result my first night's sleep was much interrupted and even after I took a sleeping tablet the following night, sleep was hard to experience.
On Sunday morning, the bags were packed and I was super-efficiently checked on my flight at the Hong Kong Station check-in facility - it's so good to drop off the bags this way, why did they have to close the Paddington check-in facilities? Bloody terrorists I suppose. I have no idea how the bags get to Hong Kong Airport as they don't appear to be loaded onto the passenger trains and you never seem to pass a 'bag' train on the line to the airport!!
Tried out my new Priority Pass card to get into an executive lounge at the airport and was quite happily checking http://www.bbc.co.uk/ for news thinking I had plenty of time before my flight to Hanoi...WRONG! A quick check of my boarding pass and...RUN! The last passenger for flight VN791 to Hanoi naughtily blamed a fictitious queue at security for his late boarding!
Plane was a reasonably new Airbus A321 and reasonably full too! Next to me was a reasonably chatty (to the point of too chatty) Kiwi girl about to start a new job in Hanoi. Tried my best to bury my nose in the in-flight magazine with limited success.
Flight landed smoothly at a rather hazy Hanoi Airport which looked spookily like the airport in Auckland, New Zealand - my Kiwi neighbour did not know what to make of that as she had remarked, what a cute little airport when she saw it. Needless to say, we did not chat too much after that!
Immigration and Customs check were a doddle and I got through very quickly and was met by the driver from the hotel I would be staying at.
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